Capella University Characteristics of Effective Team Members Reflective Paper

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Business Finance

3007 a3

Develop a 4–5-page plan for building a team. In your plan, explain the reasons for including specific functional areas on the team and describe the characteristics of effective team members. In addition, explain strategies for communication, delegating responsibility, making decisions, and handling conflict, as well as how the success of the team will be measured.

The ability to build and lead high-performing, collaborative teams is a critical skill in any size organization.

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

  • Competency 3: Solve business problems using critical and creative thinking.
    • Explain the reasons for including specific functional areas in an organizational team.
    • Explain strategies for delegating responsibility within a team.
    • Explain how the success of a team is measured.
  • Competency 4: Explain the skills and characteristics of an effective team.
    • Describe the characteristics of effective team members.
    • Explain how to effectively communicate team objectives to team members.
    • Describe strategies for handling conflict between members of a team.
  • Competency 5: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and consistent with expectations for the field of business.
    • Write in a well organized, clear, and succinct manner.

Perhaps you have heard the saying that there is no I in the word Team. This can be especially true for business professionals who have learned that the key to successful projects is often the result of effective teamwork. Therefore, teamwork has become an important element in dynamic, successful organizations that meet or exceed their goals.

In today’s rapidly changing business world, organizations rely heavily on the ability of employees to work on multiple teams that vary in duration, have a constantly evolving membership, and successfully manage change. Understanding the challenges involved in teamwork can help organizations avoid chaos and achieve their desired results.More challenging is the implementation of true collaboration in the teamwork environment. Although teamwork is desired and necessary, organizations still tend to recognize and reward individuality over team participation. Those who are tasked with leading the development of teams must find ways to encourage and support each individual to grow and function as a team. Team development is about composing and managing teams as well as inspiring and enabling their members.

Use the Capella library and the Internet to research the characteristics of effective teams, as well as strategies for building and leading teams. Use at 3–7 reputable resources to support your writing in this assessment.

For this assessment, consider you are a consultant hired by an established medium-sized manufacturing corporation with 250 employees. It directly markets one unique product. The corporation is run by a new CEO and 11 other executives who have been with the organization for varying lengths of time. The new CEO has an aggressive growth objective for the corporation of 100 percent over the next five years. The current business model will not support this objective and needs to be updated.

Your task is to create a team that will work together over a 9-month time frame to develop a proposal for a new business model and growth strategies. Your responsibilities include convening the team, assigning roles and responsibilities, structuring the team, monitoring activities and production, and documenting outcomes. The team members must come from at least three different functional areas because the new CEO wants input from a variety of stakeholders. The challenge is that under the old business model, none of the personnel working in the functional areas communicated or collaborated. In addition, the former CEO never asked for new ideas and seemed oblivious to issues the corporation was facing.

The following are key ideas for you to keep in mind as you write your plan, but this isn’t an outline for the plan. An outline and what you should include in your plan is defined in the Requirements section further below:

  • The team will work together for a sustained period of time.
  • The visible outcome of the teamwork should focus on the development of a new business model and growth strategies; however, the success of the team as an outcome is up to you and the team members.
  • There should be a representative from each of the three functional areas to produce the model.
  • A variety of perspectives is important.
  • Communication and collaboration are new priorities for teamwork; these processes have not been considered as valuable in the past.
  • Issues impacting the business model have not previously been identified by the business’ leadership.
  • Innovation previously has not been prioritized as a factor in the business model.

Develop a plan for building your team that you could present to the CEO. To facilitate evaluation of this assessment, format it according to APA guidelines.

Requirements

The purpose of this assessment is to create an overview of what should be considered when developing teams. It is not intended to be an in-depth analysis. Using the scenario described above for this assessment, write a plan with the following sections. A template with this structure is provided in Resources for you to use to create your plan if desired.

  • Title page.
  • Introduction.
    • Briefly explain the goal of your plan and the high level approach you took in developing it.
  • Functional Area Team Member Selections.
    • Select and describe team members from three of these functional areas: human resources, accounting/finance, marketing/sales, information technology, and operations.
  • Reasons for Functional Area Team Member Selections.
    • Explain the reasons for including each functional area and team member in an organizational team in terms of the advantages offered and the type of role an individual would fill.
  • Characteristics of Effective Team Members.
    • Describe the characteristics (knowledge, skills, and abilities) each team member brings to the project and explain how those characteristics support a team effort and will be crucial to its success.
  • Communicating Team Objectives.
    • Explain how you will effectively communicate team objectives, and consider the consequences of failing to do so. Will you draft a team charter? Will you write a mission statement?
  • Strategies For Delegating Responsibility.
    • Explain the types of strategies you will use to delegate responsibility within the team, how the strategies take into account individual strengths, and how responsibility is delegated fairly. Will you assign tasks or ask for volunteers?
  • Strategies for Managing Conflict.
    • Describe strategies that will be used to avoid and resolve conflicts between members of a team and consider the consequences of not dealing with conflict.
  • Success Measurement, Tools, and Process.
    • Explain how the success of the team will be measured.
  • Conclusion.
    • Summarize how your plan will result in an effective team that will contribute to organizational success.
  • References page.